- 94A
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon Cluny 1758 - 1823 Paris
Description
- Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
- cupid taken by the wings
- black and white chalk on beige paper
Provenance
Inherited from the artist by Charles-Boulanger de Boisfremont (L.353);
by inheritance to Mme. Power, née de Boisfremont, her sale, 15-16 April 1864, lot 112;
A. Marmontel (according to labels on old backing), probably his sale, Paris, 25-26 December 1883;
Donop de Monchy Collection, no. 271 (according to label on old backing);
Jean Masson, his sale, Paris, Féral, 6 December 1923 (according to label on old backing);
Jacques Mathey, in 1946
Exhibited
Paris, Exposition Prud’hon, 1874, no. 180;
Paris, Exposition Prud’hon, 1922, no. 99;
Paris, Pavillon de Marsan, Les Goncourt et leur temps, 1946, no. 318;
Paris, Galerie Cailleux, Le dessin français de Watteau à Prud’hon, 1951, no. 110;
London, The Matthiesen Gallery, Exhibition of French master drawings of the 18th century, 1950, no. 70
Literature
Edmond de Goncourt, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé de Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Paris 1876, p. 150, no. 65 ('L’Amour prisonnier' Une femme nue penchée sur l’Amour, le retient par les ailes);
Jean Guiffrey, L’œuvre de Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Paris 1924, p. 67, no. 180 ('Vénus au bain')
Catalogue Note
Possibly inspired by Falconet’s sculpted Baigneuse (marble, 1757, Paris, Musée du Louvre), this drawing is one of a number of preparatory studies for Prud’hon’s unfinished painting, Vénus au Bain (fig. 1; Paris, Musée du Louvre).
In the early stages of developing the composition, Prud’hon imagined a standing Venus, together with a single putto (as in our drawing) or several putti (as seen in another study, in another private collection; see Pierre Paul Prud'hon, La rêve de bonheur, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997-8, p. 247, fig. 178a). Subsequently, however, Prud'hon changed his mind about the pose of Venus, and in the final composition she is shown seated, holding her hair, and surrounded by five putti. In arriving at this solution, the artist worked through a number of other preparatory drawings and at least one oil sketch, now in the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (see exhibition catalogue, op. cit., 1997-8, cat. no. 179, reproduced).
The Louvre canvas remains unfinished, but in it we nonetheless see Prud'hon exploring all the sensual and narrative possibilities of the subject. Both the title and the dating of the painting have been debated. Though described in the 1823 inventory of the artist's estate under the title generally used today, Vénus au Bain, when the painting appeared at auction in 1865 it was simply entitled L'Innocence. In the 1997-8 exhibition catalogue (op. cit., p. 250), Sylvain Laveissière elegantly concludes that the presence and nature of the putti confirms that the female figure is Venus, "Mais une Vénus selon Prud'hon, naïve et ingénue, qui merite qu'on la prenne pour l'Innocence."
In terms of dating, the Vénus au Bain can be compared with works ranging in date from around 1809 (L'Amour séduit l'Innocence, private collection, 1997-8 exhibition, cat. no. 44), right up to the end of the artist's life. The 1823 sale catalogue states that it was painted for "un prince étranger", probably Prince Youssoupov, who was in Paris until 1811. There are also strong similarities of type with the 1814 painting, Jeune Zéphyr (Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts), and in the end a dating in the early 1810s seems the most likely.
The first documented owner of this important early study for the Louvre painting was the painter Charles-Boulanger de Boisfremont, who inherited a number of Prud'hon drawings directly from the artist.